47 Self-Portrait Musee d'Orsay [Photo provided to China Daily]

The smoking gun in the artist's narrative is that while the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam insists he took his own life, speculation has mounted in recent years that his shooting was by accident rather than by design – and that the gun went off during a struggle between the artist and some other locals. (It certainly wouldn't be out of character; Van Gogh's friendship with Paul Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor, when in a rage he famously severed part of his own left ear). After being shot or having shot himself in the stomach, it was another 30 apparently painful hours before Dr Paul Gachet pronounced the artist dead.

However, while the show's catalogue is far from definitive on the subject of the Lefaucheux, claiming only that there exists "a strong possibility that he [Van Gogh] used this weapon in his suicide attempt", the auction house goes on to list pieces of evidence that substantiate its provenance as the suicide weapon. It was found where Van Gogh had shot it; the bullet found in the artist's body was the same calibre as the gun; and studies showed the weapon had lain untouched in the ground since the 1890s. Authentic or otherwise, the gun-meets-gavel face-off will be keenly anticipated.